Georgia Anne Muldrow
 Slash at the Phoenix

Alternative country music is extraordinarily difficult to define. Musical labels can be meaningless and irrelevant at the best of times: after all is said and done, it is about the song. If they are used to pigeon-hole artists, then these generic labels go beyond that – listeners are effectively putting their favourite artists in musical straight-jackets, and setting themselves up for disappointment. But as long as no insurmountable barriers, masquerading as objective arbiters of truth, are erected, then the use of the term ‘alt-country’ as a loose guide, backed up by pertinent example and suggestion, can open up an enriched study of some of the highlights of modern American music.

As an example, let’s think about one particular recording of a specific song – one which, as I grew increasingly obsessed by alternative country, became my favourite song. The subjectivity of this choice of song is highlighted by the year of its release. Emmylou Harris released her album Wrecking Ball in 1995, by which time some of the other landmark alt-country bands had taken shape, made their seminal albums, and in the case of Uncle Tupelo, disbanded. How, then, can one song from this album, “Goodbye,” be considered an inspiration for a musical movement? Surely temporal realities put paid to any claims of significance the song may have? Well, to an extent this argument is magnetic and unanswerable. But the truth is somewhat deeper. Countless albums throughout the history of popular music could have founded a genre. As it turned out (and hindsight is a wonderful thing), some did and some didn’t. What brings a small number of isolated musical coincidences together and helps bring about some sort of loose coalition is a mysterious process. It may be down to overlapping personnel or social change. But in the case of alt-country, the song “Goodbye” at least represented, and even encouraged, the growth and coalescence of alternative country as some kind of organic phenomenon.

Steve Earle’s presence on this recording is no accident, and it is certainly not another celebrity guest spot, adding little but an interesting name on the sleeve: he wrote “Goodbye” himself. He is there to pass on the soul of the song, the essence of its story, from one of America’s great songwriters to the country’s foremost interpreter and shaper.

The song starts with a gentle, unobtrusive acoustic guitar figure, played by Earle himself. There are then some tentative spoken words in the background, and then Earle’s Southern drawl emerges, sounding far more laid back than when he is assaulting us with his usual barrage of acerbic verbiage: “two…one, two, three, four.” On cue, the acoustic introduction is overlaid by a firm but delicate hit of producer Daniel Lanois’ sound, as a rolling, muted, electric band enters the fray. And with that, Earle hands over his tragic ballad to Emmylou Harris and Lanois, to do with it as they see fit. Earle has been quoted as saying that to have Harris perform one of your songs is the highest compliment a songwriter can be paid, and his humility comes through in those couple of seconds: here’s my song. It starts like this. Okay, now it’s yours. The end result is a combination of Earle’s song-writing abilities, and Harris’ genius for interpretation. And what a combination it is.

Steve Earle is one of the great American songwriters. He tells stories with good tunes, good music, and his tales have a genuine relation to the landscapes and personalities of his nation. He has been the perfect American rebel: from drugs and gun busts to jail and back, from single issue campaigning to campaigning politician, Earle’s life has provided some sort of parallel to his art, which progressed from the naive and triumphant escapism of Someday, through the grafting and fighting petty criminals of Copperhead Road, to the dramatic re-definition of patriotism that is Amerika V. 6.0.

Emmylou Harris, for her part, is not so much a songwriter as a country icon and, latterly, a superb interpreter of songs penned by others. Wrecking Ball gave an entirely new sonic dimension to country music, and this was particularly important when set against the backdrop of her history as one of the pioneering traditionalists of the country-rock movement of the early seventies. From the mid-nineties, she made a series of records which gave a new confidence to country artists: with her albums she instilled in these artists enough self-belief to open the door to a whole range of influences and allow their music to be cross-pollinated.

The story told by this song is simply beautiful, and so is Harris’ voice. Her tones seem to be at one with the words she is singing, as this terribly sad tale of loss unfolds. The narrator isn’t blaming anyone but himself; and with this self-flagellation comes a naked, almost unbearable honesty:

I remember holdin’ on to you
All them long and lonely nights I put you through

The song has a vague and ethereal quality that is, however, not without its specific events – however ill-described they are – to give substance to its heartbreaking claims.

But I recall all of them nights down in Mexico
One place I may never go
In my life again

Harris sings the song with a restrained sort of passion. You know that she feels the song fully and completely; but at the same time, as Earle holds back full details of what happened in those Mexican nights, what he did to destroy such a love, Harris holds back from giving her emotions free rein. She retains some semblance of control, represented by the high-pitched stridency she employs – you feel that if she were to let it all out, the whole story would doubtless emerge, and that is not the song’s intention.

In any case, it becomes gradually clearer that such emotional intensity would destroy her, because however tumultuous it would be if she were to divulge everything that took place, this revelation would be as nothing compared with the full realization, the full expression, of the ultimate horror: the isolated but colossal gap in her memory.

Most Novembers I break down and cry
’Cause I can’t remember if we said goodbye

So Harris’ vocal performance is restrained by the semi-transparent, semi-opaque story delivered by Steve Earle; and the musical direction of the recording reflects this tension. Once Earle has counted it in, a soft but insistent drum-beat underpins the song; the acoustic guitar continues but is just about submerged by the more electrified – though equally muted – patterns of the electric guitar and the bass. The whole ensemble maintains its sense of quiet, but at the same time there is urgency. As Harris sings of Mexico, the Caribbean and an evocative soft breeze, the band keeps itself at one with these images by taking the listener right there – across the plains from wherever they started out to each new location. But at the same time, the band keeps its distance from Harris, who remains within a high pitch register; at times it seems as if she wants to drag the band back to a more traditional country sound, with blunter rhythms, higher melodies and older instruments. But the band resists, and the result is a fantastically cross-fertilized sound. A country song, a country singer, an alternative feel.

So this recording of “Goodbye” is particularly important. Beautifully conceived and executed, it rolls across the listener’s consciousness, enforcing some kind of musical absorption which you don’t realize has taken place until the process is complete. But it is just as significant for what it represents: the fusion of the classic American songwriter and the born-again innovator. As we will see, alternative country music always has one or other of these aspects – and, when it is at its best, alt-country is precisely the combination of the two: great American songs recorded in an original and fresh musical style.

This is an excerpt from Mike Short’s unpublished book about alternative country music, Fearless Romantics, available from the author. Email him at mikeshort8@gmail.com.

Daniel Lanois is an award winning producer for bands including Brandon Flowers, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, U2, and more.

Last night, Daniel Lanois was recognized by the Canadian Music Industry Hall Of Fame for his work as a producer, engineer and artist. This 60 year-old Quebecker from Hull has paid his dues almost silently behind some of the greatest acts in Rock History (Bob Dylan, U2, Peter Gabriel, Neil Young), but just like Canadian Music Week President Neill Dixon says “It’s time we in Canada celebrate the career of this remarkable man.” (http://www.cmw.net/awards/acclaimed-producer-engineer-artist-daniel-lanois-to-be-inducted-into-canadian-music-industry-hall-of-fame/)

I truly admire Lanois’ work ethic, influence and most importantly his music.

Over the last year, I have had the pleasure of chatting with some of Daniel’s friends, family and supporting acts. Here is his protege Rocco DeLuca and touring bass player Jim Wilson (Mother Superior, Black Dub) sharing their appreciation for their mentor and friend Daniel Lanois:

Rocco Deluca http://roccodeluca.com/

Jim Wilson http://jimwilsonmusic.blogspot.com

Congratulations Dan! Much deserved!

~RNS~

I’m intimidated every day of my life. I’m a very insecure person. If a milkman comes to the door–should there be such a person left on the planet–then I get intimidated. Shall I take the two percent, or the whole?  (Daniel Lanois)

***

Once upon a time, my sister and I were at one of those stores that has a Starbucks inside it, on the far side of the row of cash registers.  My sister was buying some things, and she was trying to talk me into getting some fancy Starbucks drink for her while she was in the checkout.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?” she said.

“Because I don’t know what you want,” I said.

“It’s easy,” she said, “I just want a [insert name of drink here]“

“What if they ask if you want some option or another, and I don’t know the answer?” I asked.

“They won’t,” she said.

“They always do,” I said.  “This is why I hate getting other people’s orders for them. There’s always a question I didn’t anticipate, and I never know the answer, and I’m always afraid of screwing it up.  Like Subway.  I will never offer to pick up Subway for somebody.  Too many questions!”

She finally laughed.  “I know!” she said.  “Dad always says he wants everything, and then when I get there they ask, do you want these?, and I say, I don’t know, is that part of everything?”

“Exactly,” I said.  “There’s always a question I don’t know the answer to.  It’s too nerve-wracking.”

By this point, we were checking out.  Not only had I successfully avoided the situation, but we had also provided some entertainment to the teenaged cashier, who was trying hard to keep a straight face.

The Daniel Lanois quotation above is from this interview about the making of Bob Dylan’s (wonderful) record, Oh Mercy.  It’s in response to a question about whether he was intimidated to work with Bob Dylan.  At first, I believed Lanois was going to comment on how he has had occasion to work with many famous/intimidating people in the course of his career.  I’m infinitely satisfied that he instead answered like a true shy person.

A host of celebrities have raised funds for Sport Relief

Part two of the intriguing mini series that sees pastors from overseas attempt to renew the faith in Britain. One hundred and 50 years after Livingstone brought Christianity to Africa, Malawian Pastor John Chilimtsidya tries to give some of it back to Glasgow – but children there seem to know more about Jordan than they do Jesus.

Classic Albums, BBC4, 9pm

The enjoyable but sporadic series devotes an hour to Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album, So, a transatlantic hit that featured the classic track Sledgehammer. Interviews with producer Daniel Lanois, Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke and Gabriel himself flesh out the trip down muso memory lane.

Safari Vet School, ITV1, 8pm

It’s the last day that the 32  rookie vets will spend on the challenging Amakhala Game Reserve in South Africa, so it’s time for reflection on the beauty of nature and how far they’ve come. And a lookout point called God’s Window, which has breathtaking views over the reserve, proves just the right spot.

Sport Relief 2012, BBC1, 7pm

After a host of teaser events (including John Bishop’s triathlon from hell last night), we finally have the big TV fundraising jamboree before the public get sweaty themselves for the Sport Relief Mile run on Sunday. QI, Mock The Week and A Question Of Sport are among the featured panel shows, while the casts of Miranda, Strictly and Britain’s Got Talent provide additional fun and games. Gary Lineker, Davina McCall and Dermot O’Leary are among a slew of hosts persuading us to part with our cash.

An unusual case baffles detectives in Criminal Minds

An unusual case this week: two professional couples have been shot dead in Washington, their only link being that they’ve both fostered children. Are they the victims of a twisted kind of love? Meanwhile, Garcia fears a marriage proposal from her tech analyst boyfriend, Kevin.

Film choice: The Others, Film4, 9pm

Ghost stories rarely come classier than this spooky little number. Based on Henry James’s Turn Of The Screw, but now set at the end of World War II, a perfectly cast Nicole Kidman is luminous, to the point of glow-in-the-dark, as Grace, a nervy Catholic mother who keeps her two children locked in permanent blackness. She believes they are photosensitive but when a new group of servants start to challenge her bizarre health and safety rules, Grace’s grip starts to tremble while ghouls begin to pop out the woodwork.

VIDEO: Watch a preview of John Bishop’s Sport Relief marathon

Daniel Lanois does not like to sit still. His black-trousered legs jitter and his biker jacket squeaks with each gesture as he crouches forward in a chair in his Toronto studio, reflecting on a musical career so jam-packed, it suggests he’s never taken a vacation. Although he claims that he’s drowsy, he’s clearly crackling with energy.

“My life is out of balance,” he says. “I don’t know that a balanced life would have made me as prolific. As I look at my body of work now, it’s incredible. I can’t even claim to understand it, this drive that I have. You don’t see it right now because we’re just sitting here quietly, but when I get rolling, man …”

[np-related]

Lanois has been rolling since his teenage years in the late ’60s, when he and his brother Bob started recording bands in their mother’s Hamilton, Ont., basement. Since then, the Hull, Que., native has produced a roll call of superstars including Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, Emmylou Harris and, with Brian Eno, most of U2’s work since 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire. He has also released a wealth of underrated work as a songwriter, singer and guitarist, both solo and with his soul/rock collective, Black Dub. On Thursday, his legacy will see him inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame as part of Canadian Music Week, and two shows at Toronto’s Great Hall with long-time drummer Brian Blade will follow.

An avid tinkerer with wires and gadgets, Lanois has rigged his studio with equipment for the concerts: an electric train bearing a camera rides around the drum kit, and a “Dub Shack” made of blackboard walls and a corrugated roof houses the mixing board on which he’ll perform ambient dub music as his own opening act. He hopes to foster the same “living room”-type environment for fans as he did on 2010’s Nuit Blanche, when he played from sundown to sunrise in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square, just four months after the L.A. motorcycle crash that nearly claimed his life. Sometimes he still feels pain from having had his rib cage “smashed,” but he chuckles: “I’m still here, man.”

Lanois is continually driven, he says, by his “calling” to make music, a “force” that he felt early in his life and that returns on occasion as “a striking point, a moment where something just [comes] over me.” The last time this happened was at 4 a.m. on a solo drive in 2005 down Baja California in Mexico; he starts to tell the story and then springs out of his chair to walk off for a bit, silent as if overcome.

Turning back, he resumes, with coiled intensity: “It was so powerful that I had to pull over. And at that moment, I saw the future of music. I abandoned the car and walked into the desert, in the middle of nowhere.” There he stayed until sunrise, “and it was clear to me what I had to do.”

Lanois was overcome by a feeling of responsibility to make “excellent” albums that will long outlast him — and to “have as many people involved” as he can in their creation. “If I can be a teacher to them of what I know best, and they leave with knowledge and skill, then my job is done, plus hopefully we have a masterpiece to stand by.”

But how does one go about doing so? After all, such an expectation must give rise to extraordinary pressure. The beginning of a project, Lanois says, sitting back now, is more “mechanical.” The other side of his personality — the technical innovator, the “forensic” analyst of music, comes to the forefront here. In order to gain musicians’ trust, he sets down schematic diagrams of the songs and makes suggestions based on “factual information.” Once work is underway and “you’ve got something that’s great and everybody agrees, then off you go. … The people that you’re with — and the hanging out and the philosophical exchanges, will determine a certain kind of direction.”

Occasionally, Lanois has to enforce a direction: during the recording of Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album So, he locked the singer — whom he insists is a “great dude” — in the barn where he’d sporadically retreat to write lyrics by nailing railway spikes in front of the door. “What I was trying to get at was, ‘It’s time to concentrate on our work.’ Peter had a few diversions at the time, and I made it clear to him. I came close to getting fired, of course. He was worried. I think he eventually crawled out of some little fire chute, or the coal digger’s door.”

A few years later, in an incident detailed in Bob Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles, Volume 1, Lanois smashed a dobro “with furious actions” during the recording of Oh Mercy, reducing a girl who worked in the studio to tears. “Well, there was a moment there,” the producer admits, somewhat sheepishly. “I’m a bit of a hothead French Canadian. I try to not do that anymore, but sometimes you just gotta stake your claim, say, ‘This is how it’s gonna be done.’ I had to assert myself, make it clear that it was not about to be a lot different than it was, but it was about to be great!”

Lanois says his anger probably stems from “growing-up, childhood, psychological s–t, but you’ve gotta take five years off to sort through this kind of s–t, don’t you?” He laughs at the idea. But he’s certainly no Phil Spector; Lanois is fiery in such a way that he exudes warmth. And many artists — including Dylan and Gabriel — have returned to work with him repeatedly. They appreciate his skill at getting both feel and what he calls sonic “depth of field,” which evokes various emotional responses at once, in a recording.

For now, his focus is on his own work, including some music intended for a Roberto Rodriguez science-fiction film and a “comedy song” with Jim Carrey — The Motorcycle-Riding Song — it’s pretty funny!”

And though he’s happy to be inducted in the hall of fame, he insists, “It’s more about the work than about me. If you like the record, then you feel all the labour and see all the beauty and hear the complexities and the depth, the dimension, and that’s it. … I suppose it’s a way of saying, ‘Thanks, Lanois. We were out nightclubbin’ while you were working. And it shows.’ ”

Daniel Lanois plays at The Great Hall in Toronto on Mar. 23-24. Canadian Music Week runs from Mar. 22-25. For details, visit cmw.net.

ATWOOD: Payback at TIFF

Jennifer Baichwal and Margaret Atwood get the red carpet treatment at TIFF Bell Lightbox tonight for the Canadian premiere of Payback, the new Baichwal doc based on Atwood’s Payback: Debt And The Shadow Side Of Wealth. The Q&A  following the By Invitation Only screening will be hosted by Walrus senior editor Sasha Chapman …  Parks And Recreation laugh-getter Nick Offerman has been cast in Diablo Cody’s directorial debut …  and don’t say we didn’t warn ya: Both of Daniel Lanois’s March 23-24 concerts with Brian Blade at the Great Hall in Toronto are completely sold out. The concerts coincide with Lanois’ induction into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame during Canadian Music Week.

STAGE STRUCK: Three stage giants are set to share their remarkable talents with Toronto theatergoers in the next three weeks. First up is Linda Griffiths, who will reprise her bravura performance as Margaret Trudeau in a reading of

MACIVOR: world premiere

Maggie and Pierre this Saturday at Theatre Passe Muraille, staged by Paul Thompson. Thompson will  also play P.E.T to her Maggie. (Wow, what a way to spend St. Patrick’s Day!) Then, two nights later at TPM, on Monday March 19, Michael Healey will appear in his latest play, Proud, a script Tarragon Theatre reportedly declined to produce for fear of incurring the wrath of the PMO. And two weeks later Tarragon playwright-in-residence Daniel MacIvor, who recently dazzled us with a stunning revival of His Greatness, will premiere his new play Was Spring on April 4 at Tarragon with Clare Coulter, Caroline Gillis and Jessica Moss.  Talk about yer embarrassments of riches! If I were you I’d start dialing for ducats right now.

INTERVIEWUS INTERRUPTUS: He was a solid Celebrity Apprentice, and an appealing if impatient judge on America’s Got Talent,  but I suspect the romance is over between the public and Piers Morgan.  As the current

MORGAN: interrupter

occupant of Larry King‘s coveted nightly spot on CNN, he’s constantly attracting some of the biggest names in show business, sports and politics — and then constantly interrupting them, clearly bored by their responses.  At one point I thought he was getting over himself; turns out I was wrong. In my opinion Morgan  is absolutely capable of delivering the goods — but only when he pauses long enough to listen, which he does all too rarely. Says Manhattan gossip girl Liz Smith: “Piers Morgan will never warm the cockles of my heart, but I suppose some people enjoy his smirky style.“ Ouch!

IT’S A MAD, MAD WORLD: New Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award winner Matt Weiner, creator of US cable hit Mad Men, is getting ready to  launch season five later this month. He told C21 that he wrote the pilot for the series before he even started working on HBO’s The Sopranos – but no one would touch it. “HBO rejected the show about 80 times,” he says. “Going to AMC

MAD MEN: taking the fifth (season)

wasn’t a choice; it was the only company that was interested. People were telling me how they felt so bad for me because no one was going to see my show. When Christina Hendricks agreed to be a series regular, her manager fired her.

WEINER: getting Mad

People would say to me: ‘You were executive producer on the most exciting show on TV [The Sopranos] and this is what you turned it into.’” Mad Men was the first original show that AMC picked up, and the network tried to coax Lionsgate into partnering with them. But Lionsgate thought the period-piece pilot was too expensive so AMC shouldered the cost of shooting it. When they saw it Lionsgate execs thought the pilot was extraordinary — which it was — and signed on for the series. Which is how we got to see Mad Men.  And how Mad Men got to become the first cable series the win the Emmy for Best Drama, which it has won every year for its first four seasons. And you thought making television was easy!

Production secret’s of ‘Le Noise’…

Daniel Lanois tells how was the process to make Neil Young latest record…

1.  Protest the Hero

“Sequoia Throne”

If you like your music metallic with a touch of big time screaming, then this song is made for you.  Released in 2008, Protest the Hero cuts loose in all directions.

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2. Spirit of the West

“Political”

A great song from 1987, Spirit of the West, and this song in particular, have always been part of personal soundtrack.

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3. The Weakerthans

“Civil Twilight”

This Winnipeg band, formed in 1997 released this song, which became an inst-rant classic. Love this song.

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4. Daniel Lanois

“The Maker”

Another entry from the great Daniel Lanois.

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5. 5440

“Ocean Pearl”

A further entry from 5440.  This piece of Canadian classic rock history still sounds as fresh as it did the first time I heard.  Great song by a great sounding band.

Related articles

• Canada’s Best Music – 5 Songs At A Time – Part 13 (joebeans2002.wordpress.com)
• Canada’s Best Music – 5 Songs At A Time – Part 12 (joebeans2002.wordpress.com)

PIECZONKA: Toronto Tosca

sublime Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka continues to dazzle as Tosca in the lavish COC production at the Four Seasons Centre now through Feb. 25 …  Daniel Lanois is set for two CBC Music concerts next month at the Great Hall on Queen Street.  The concerts coincide with Lanois’ induction into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame during Canadian Music Week festivities that same week … and legendary country gentleman Tommy Hunter will celebrate his 75^th birthday by hanging up his guitar once and for all. Currently on tour, he’ll blow out the candles at a splashy birthday party in London, ON, on March 20, right after he gives his final concert at the John Labatt Centre. Should be quite a night!

HATS OFF:  To Tony Bennett and Celine Dion, who skipped the platitudes and went straight to the heart of Whitney Houston’stragic demise. Bennett says he has received mostly positive reaction to his statement urging the legalization of drugs in the U.S.

HUNTER: birthday boy

Legalization, he believes, would get rid of all the gangsters. “One thing I’ve learned about young people, when you say ‘Don’t do this,’ that’s the one thing they’re going to try and do. Once it’s legal and everybody can do it, there is no longer the desire to do something that nobody else can do.” Bennett, now 85, survived his own cocaine habit in the late ‘70s. Houston, who was 48, had admitted to using cocaine, marijuana and pills in the past. Dion, who is now, 43, considered Houston  “an amazing inspiration” but was clearly upset that “drugs, bad people, bad influences, took over her dreams, her motherhood,” she told Good Morning America this week. “When you

DION: remembering Whitney

think about Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson — to get into drugs like that for whatever reason – because of stress, bad influence, whatever — something happens that I don’t understand. That’s why I’m scared of show business, of drugs and hanging out. That’s why I don’t go to parties!” The private By Invitation Only funeral for Houston is set for tomorrow in New Jersey.

AND YES, YOU SHOULD TAKE IT PERSONALLY:  She’s worth millions and demonstrates how she got there every week on CBC’s megahit series Dragons’ Den.  But Arlene Dickinson shares even more of herself in her first (but, I predict, not her last) bestselling book, Persuasion, with some hard-won personal advice that everyone can use. “It’s a good idea,” she notes, “to take a hard look at your own narrative. Think about how you’d tell your life story to a Hollywood producer, how you’d explain the highs and lows. Have you cast yourself as a victim of circumstance? If so, maybe your story could use a rewrite, starting with the lead character who has choices – and sometimes makes the wrong ones.”

DICKINSON: persuasive life lessons

Making the wrong ones is something Dickinson knows about. She’s made quite a few herself. But, as she points out, those of us who have made some wrong choices along the way are in good company. High achievers are mistake makers, a fact she illustrates with engaging examples from Henry Ford to Oprah. (My favorite? Thomas Edison’s perspective on his many unsuccessful attempts to invent the light bulb. “I didn’t fail one thousand times. The lightbulb was an invention with one thousand steps.”)

Persuasion is about the art of connecting with the person you seek to persuade. It’s about caring. And about how to master “a little-known secret to success in business”  – listening. But because Dickinson makes it personal, Persuasion is much more than a How To book; it’s a survival guide for the mind and, sometimes, the soul. And within that survival guide are some valuable insights on corporate culture. “Staying in a situation you hate and complaining about everything that’s wrong, but never trying to fix it, doesn’t make you a martyr. It makes you complicit.”  Similarly, her views on our ability to choose the consequences of failure are bracing and refreshing. Bitterness is not an option, she insists, and shares another favorite quote, this one by mathematician Blaise Pascal: “Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

As CEO of Venture Communications she also has  some genuinely amusing business stories to tell, including the time one of her partners,  trying to save the company money, arranged for her team to stay on a friend’s sailboat off Vancouver Island instead of paying for pricey Vancouver hotel rooms. When they arrived at the dock she noticed that the boat’s name was Important Business  – and “suddenly realized what my partners meant when they told me in the past that they work ‘going away on important business.’ They were talking about this sailboat!”

Stylish on screen and off, she appreciates the fame that television has brought her but resists the urge to take it for granted. “I have exactly the same insecurities anyone has,” she admits. “If anything, they’re even more overwhelming when you know a couple of million people are seeing all your flaws in high definition!” And despite the fact that her on-screen chemistry with fellow Dragon Kevin O’Leary has made her an audience favourite, her account of her auditions for Dragons’ Den (yes, she had to do more than one) and how she had to discipline her own self-doubts to get the job — she replaced another Dragon when she came to the series in its second season — is intriguing inside stuff.

Of course that’s why Persuasion is a bestseller. It’s a hypnotic, hard-to-put-down book of life lessons shared by someone who had to learn most of them the hard way. As Arlene Dickinson sees it, the main obstacle standing in our way is, not surprisingly, us. “Our past shapes and influences who we are, but it doesn’t limit who we can become.” Persuasion, as promised, is a new approach to changing minds. And although she preaches the power of persuasion, she urges her readers to be sure of their objectives, be they personal or professional. “Before you set out to persuade someone,” Dickinson writes, “you need to be certain that you actually want what you’re asking for. Because you just might get it.”

*     *     *

At first listen, you’d swear old buddy Mark Knopfler had jetted in to lay down the spare but telling licks on this track off Oh Mercy, when in actuality it’s just Dylan and Daniel Lanois flickering over Malcolm Burn’s keyboard bed much like smoke flickers on the water in the song. The music is all about suggestion, the spaces between being far more important than what can actually be heard.

Dylan frames the song brilliantly. He uses the first verse to set the desolate scene:  crickets chirping in the air freshened by a hurricane, a woman’s dress hanging on the line unretrieved. It becomes clear quickly why that dress is hanging on the line:  “Not a word of goodbye, not even a note/She gone with the man in the long black coat.”

So who was this stranger? A preacher? A psychopath? A Johnny Cash impersonator? Ultimately, he’s not the important part of the story; silver-tongued seducers are a dime a dozen. What’s important is what makes this woman leave with him. Is it simply a matter of us all being “vile and depraved?” Or is it less black-and-white than that? Maybe she’s not even in the wrong for making this choice:  “There are no mistakes in life some people say/It is true sometimes you can see it that way.”

What’s clear is that this isn’t as rare an occurrence as you might think, as Dylan speculates in the final verse, which returns to the hurricane-ravaged setting of the opening. Bob sings, “Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force/Somebody is out there beating a dead horse.” In other words, you can talk about it, make judgments, rend your garments, but human nature isn’t going to change. There will always be somebody new to betray their ideals and beliefs in exchange for a few kind words from a stranger.

It comes down to wisdom versus charisma. That eternal battle is played out in miniature in “Man In The Long Black Coat,” and it’s clear what side Dylan thinks comes out on top more often than not.

Dylan holds the center of “Cold Irons Bound” down with his drawled vocal, elongating some words past their breaking point and snapping off others as if he can taste the bile inside of them. His character here is chained to a doomed love, destroying any semblance of joy or comfort. The 20 miles he mentions in the chorus seems like a distance he will never surmount.

Yet the herky-jerky beat keeps this guy inching forward in fits and starts, bloody clouds above him and a jagged road ahead, surveying the detritus of his life and making wry observations about it all. At times, you can feel his pain through the speakers:  “It’s such a sad thing to see beauty decay/It’s sadder still to feel your heart torn away.” His betrayals pile up in his path:  “There’s too many people. too many to recall/I thought some of ‘m were friends of mine, I was wrong about ‘m all.”

Even still, his heart still flickers with the old feelings:  “I’m gonna remember forever the joy we shared.” Then again, “Cold Irons Bound” makes it clear that he couldn’t forget this woman even if he wanted to do so, for no amount of amnesia could alleviate the anguish on display here.

That momentum is necessary to cut through the BS in the world that Dylan has depicted here. Anybody who thinks he’s talking about a “Political World” in terms of Republicans and Democrats is probably misguided. The politics to which he is referring seem to me to be the kind that dissuade people from all walks of life from serving mankind first instead of their own best interests.

Not that Dylan is placing all of the blame on the regular folk. He suggests that the game has been rigged (“it’s all a stacked deck,”) leading us to put self-preservation above all else. The domino effect is even more insidious because we don’t even recognize its existence as we live through it (“We live in a political world/The one we can see and feel.”)

Dylan throws in concrete lines that have a way of coming around in relevancy from time to time. (“Life is in mirrors, death disappears/Up the steps into the bank” sure rings true, these days, doesn’t it?) Yet it’s the general deception affecting the world that overrides everything else, leading us all to fall for it:  “As soon as you’re awake, you’re trained to take/What looks like the easy way out.”

I would even go so far as to say that this song isn’t all that dissimilar in message to those released during Dylan’s religious period. The only difference is the perpetrators in “Political World” often use a religious screen to mask their selfishness:  “Everything is hers or his/Climb into the frame and shout God’s name/But you’re never sure what it is.”

In Dylan’s world, being political suggests something far sinister than taking the party line on health care or national security. The “Political World” he sees is nothing less than Hell on Earth.

I’m totally enamored with Daniel Lanois’ newest project, Black Dub. Seeing them live last year at the Aladdin Theater was quite the treat. Brian Blade is an amazing drummer, and I can’t say enough about Trixie Whitley or Daniel Lanois’ singing.

Producer Daniel Lanois said that he tried to base this track off Time Out Of Mind on “Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands,” but the only echoes of that classic show up in Jim Keltner’s sauntering beat. Otherwise, it’s all moaning guitars interrupted on occasion by Dylan’s minimalist harmonica solos, which are mesmerizing in the way they express so much while exploring a small range of notes.

There is a sense that the narrator in this song has resigned himself to his restless place in the world. The longings and aches that permeate the lyrics are muted somewhat; they don’t seem to cut this guy that deep anymore (“Every day you memory grows/it doesn’t haunt me like it did before.”) Yet the numbness is sad in its own way. You get the feeling throughout that this guy would like to experience true feelings again, even if they might turn out to be unpleasant.

The protagonist seems to have acquired enough world-weary wisdom to not only peg the people with whom he crosses paths but also to understand his own calamity. I’m a fan of Fitzgerald’s This Side Of Paradise, and this song reminds me of the protagonist’s closing lines:  “‘I know myself,’ he cried, “but that is all.” Dylan’s character in “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven” also experiences the hollow victory that comes with unlocking the mysteries of life when it’s far too late to make good use of this knowledge.

“Everything Is Broken” may sound like Dylan is just making a list of everything he sees and adding the word “broken” to it. But there is sly wordplay at hand throughout, and a bevy of images that catch you unaware when you really think about them. For instance, “People sleeping in broken beds” hints at a preponderance of marital strife across the land. Meanwhile, the imagery conjured by “Broken voices on broken phones” is downright chilling.

Dylan brings it down to a personal level in one of the bridges:  “Every time you go off and leave someplace/Things fall to pieces in my face.” It adds another dimension to the song, suggesting that the narrator loses his rose-coloured glasses when his love is away, suddenly seeing what the world is really like.

As Dylan scats above Tony Hall’s Peter Gunn-style bass line, producer Daniel Lanois blurs the picture with some tremolo effects. The end result is propulsive and ominous all at once. It could have gone on forever, but “Everything Is Broken” expertly paints its broken picture at any length.

Give me another take.

And another.

Another.

Black Dub (Brian Blade, drums; Trixie Whitley, drums, vocals; Daniel Lanois, guitar, vocals; Jim Wilson, bass, vocals), “Last Time”

1: Santa Monica, 2/16/11

***

2: Philadelphia, 11/18/10

***

3: Vancouver, 2/2/11

***

4: Hamburg, 7/21/11

]]> http://skygoodden.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/sketch-solitude-in-numbers-the-struggle-of-nuit-blanche/ Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:36:59 +0000 skygoodden http://skygoodden.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/sketch-solitude-in-numbers-the-struggle-of-nuit-blanche/ Goodden Sketch Article

In the end, this production by Daniel Lanois, who, of course, also collaborated with U2, is to the song’s detriment. Dylan’s lyrics, which are wondrous without ever being too showy here, get a little bit lost in the shuffle underneath drummer Alton Rubin Jr.’s impression of Larry Mullen Jr.

I think that Dylan sensed the disconnect there, which is one of the reasons that he left it off the album. He also talks in Chronicles about he and Lanois jousting over the structure of the song, with the producer wanting to build the song out of the bridge. You can’t blame him for that, because the bridge is fantastic, but it was too much of a struggle for Bob to reimagine the song in that way.

All of this craziness caused the song to trickle out on several different Greatest Hits collections and the first Bootleg Series release, and it works best in that context. It’s truly a stand-alone kind of thing, and likely would have seemed like a non-sequitur no matter the album it inhabited.

Ah, but those lyrics are truly something, aren’t they? My take is that Dylan seems to be willing to give himself over to the power of these apparitions and shades that visit his slumber without questioning their significance. Take the bridge for example:

Dreams where the umbrella is folding                                                                                                                                                                  Into the path you are hurled                                                                                                                                                                                    And the cards are no good that you’re holding                                                                                                                                           Unless they’re from another world 

The corporeal stuff won’t help you in this world that Dylan has conjured. Only the nonsensical truly makes sense here.

I also find it intriguing how Dylan says that he’s “thinking about a series of dreams.” He’s not actually inside the dreams as he sings, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any guarantee that he’ll get back there again. It lends an air of wistfulness to the proceedings, just another element to this beguiling oddball of a track. The song may ultimately be something of a missed opportunity, but all missed opportunities should be this good.

In village or forest, on the hills or in the plain, wherever the awakened ones live is delightful.

one

U2's iconic cover for The Joshua Tree

None of which means a thing to me. That’s all fodder for someone else’s thesis, not mine.

The reason U2 is on this list is for the impact their landmark 1987 release The Joshua Tree had on me as an 11-year old. Joshua marked my first exposure to “serious” music, music that was about more than chasing after girls; the lyrics dealt in themes and imagery that were difficult for me to comprehend then, but the music was of such conviction, purpose, and force that I could fake my way through the songs until (eventually) I created my own images and understanding based more on rhythm and mood than the actual lyrics.

The constant exposure of this song on radio and television more or less thrust U2 upon me; at first, like many I suppose, I balked. “With or Without You,” number six in the 35 in 35 playlist, was the one that kicked off the whole U2 thing for me.

Funnily enough, for a song that would be my personal fave for many years, I hated With Or Without You  at first. Too mellow, too moody perhaps? Coming off a mild Bon Jovi/Def Leppard fixation, I found the femininity of this track off-putting. Fact is, for most of my young life, I hated ballads. Well, hate is a harsh term, but ballads generally were “boring” bits, the songs that screamed for fast forward buttons. My initial reaction was that this was a sissy love song and I wanted no part of it.

This song would win me over however and, among other things, lead me to look for more dynamic forms of pop music. After this song (and to a large extent the albums mellower material), I wouldn’t dismiss a song simply because it didn’t have  a masturbatory guitar solo, a sax bridge a la Clarence Clemons, or some psychotic breakdown in the middle. After I picked up a cassette of Joshua, I realized that there was more to the band than the singles. I loved “Bullet the blue Sky” for its (to me) heavy-metal-falling-from-the-sky-largeness every bit as I loved the stilted stagger of “Trip Through Your Wires.” Yet in songs like “Exit” and “Mothers of the Disappeared,” the heightened emotions, the moodiness, the raw surge of emotion spoke to me more than any of Edge’s fretwork or the bombast of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.

A latter day Bono Vox

What attracted me to these songs, was Bono’s voice. On “With Or Without You” he throws himself into the last chorus like a depressed lemming on vacation at the Grand Canyon. Over the top, over the edge,and straight into some pulsating pit of Hell. For my ears, attuned to Top 40 vocal calisthenics, I was in awe of his power. Few bands that I knew of (then!) used the vocalist so effectively or prominently.

Another significant and historic result of this album was that is permanently placed both Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno in my life. From this point on, any album produced by these two was something I wanted to hear. The importance of production and producers was not something I ever considered before this album. Joshua sound nothing like INXS ( another fave in 1987) or any other album of the day.

Even the quiet moments have so much happening. The album opening fade-in and the fade-out at the end of side one neatly bookend Joshua while the nearly somnambulist “Exit” builds a choking intensity before it lets off an effusive, pulsating explosion of musical rage; “Mothers…” creates something more than a mood, but a landscape that is both barren and blood-soaked. These were songs of an exploratory soul and the producers fed the musicians. Top-loaded with ideas,  Joshua never feels over-produced. The songs sounded weathered, aged and perfect with age in 1987; they could have been hymns from Babel.

All of the allegorical and political elements inherent with the Joshua Tree were a secondary concern for me. And music as activism was something that, in time, and thanks to the likes of U2, Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M., would be a more desirable quality in years and albums to come. For the time being, it was the naked emotion of “With Or With Out You” that spoke to me. The song was cathartic and kinetic in ways that music had never been before.

And yet the deeper meaning of my relationship to this song has always escaped me. I’ve never put a face or a name to the song myself as I’ve never felt that the song was intended to be just another ballad . Even as daft a kid as I was, the iconography of the music video and the religious background of U2 made the value and meaning of this song something more tangible than love between two beings.

Unlike Bono, there is no Christ in my life, no Deity of any stripe or shade; there is, however, music, a grand force of uncommon strength and magic. It is an essence that I cannot hold or even comprehend. The idea of its non-existence is terrifying to me. As I reflect on the song now, I am convinced this is what Bono was singing of all along.

This has always been one of those songs that stops me in my tracks and my thoughts…every time. I can never just let the song be beautiful wallpaper or an envelope of sound, I have to put books down, turn the television volume down, or turn away from whatever distraction there is so I can follow the songs crest. I always need to breathe in the dark air of the first two verses, allow that tension to consume me, and, finally, let the duel between Edge’s guitar and Bono’s eagle-like shrieking tear that wall of tension down. Few songs leave me spent as this one does; fewer ballads at that. In my world, there are fewer higher compliments I could give a song.

U2 would become a very big deal to me for the next several years and albums. My interest petered out after the dazzling brilliance of Zooropa, only to be reignited in 2009 with No Line on the Horizon. But in between, there was always “With Or Without You” and The Joshua Tree. My love for this song never wilted. Raising the bar so high, its no wonder that it is on par with Baba O’Riley in my mind. (A little foreshadowing perhaps?)

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Canadian music through the years, like Canada itself, has formed a bedrock of classic songs. Reflecting on the calibre of songwriting that has come from Canadian artists, I created this playlist and was delighted by its depth and staying power. It’s not a profile of Canadian music…that would be a longer list. Rather, I made my selections primarily from the folk and rock genres that mingle so naturally to form a distinctly Canadian sound.

1. Going to the Country, Bruce Cockburn – From his first album, a really good, simple folk song.

2. Blackbird, The Beatles – The only import on the list. It blended so beautifully with the first track, I had to add it as a companion.

3. When She Loved Me, Sara McLachlan – Heartbreaking ballad, one of McLachlan’s best, but unknown unless you have kids and watched Toy Story 2

4. Pulling on a Line, Great Lakes Swimmers – Relatively new group with an appealing folk-rock sound

5. Try, Blue Rodeo

6. Lovers in a Dangerous Time, Barenaked Ladies – Still one of their best recordings,  I think. Their interpretation of this Bruce Cockburn song was original and introduced Canada to their own distinctive style that would launch their career.

7. Jolie Louise, Daniel Lanois – An old-fashioned ballad telling a tragic story. The song is constructed so simply and performed with a rustic minimalism.

8. Miss Chatelaine, K.D. Lang – Cinematically classic

9. Spot the Difference, Spirit of the West – A more mainstream sound from this group known for its classically celtic style.

10. Harvest Moon, Neil Young – One of the most beautiful compositions ever.

11. Save Me, K.D. Lang

12. Bobcaygeon, The Tragically Hip – The best Canadian song of the 1990s.

13. Hallelujah, K.D. Lang – Watch her Vancouver Olympics closing ceremony performance of this song. Incredible.